Archives West Finding Aid

"Singin" Sam Agins was born in Denver, Colorado on June 4, 1919 and died in Sun City, Arizona on March 28, 1996. Agins is best known as an American folk singer that learned to play the fiddle and guitar in his youth. Though limited to the use of crutches or a wheelchair for mobility, Agins became an inspiration for many who attended his concerts. During the 1940s and 1950s he entertained disabled youth, veterans, and children in hospitals, acting as Ambassador of Goodwill Industries. Other groups treated to Agins' talents included prisoners in New Mexico and guests at ranches in the Rocky Mountain West.

Not only a musician but a lyricist and collector of others' lyrics, Agins wrote, collected, and recorded songs throughout his life and established his own recording company, Haywire, in the 1970s, He numbered among his friends the Mexican and American cowboys, as well as hobos ("gentlemen of the highways") who shared their songs and stories with him. His other writings included an autobiography, 3 Dimes and a Button, and several plays, poems, magazine articles, news columns, and a photo essay called Round Legs.

Agins was not only a musician and writer but also a multitalented craftsman. His interest in American folk culture probably started in California where, as a boy, he learned to train horses and grew adept at rope work, and silver and goldsmithing.

Singin' Sam's career took him all over the Rocky Mountain West where he gave concerts and taught classes about folk singing at the University of Wyoming and at other institutions in Colorado, Idaho, and Arizona. He represented the United States in the 1976 Smithsonian Institution's Montreal Expo and served as an expert on early American folk songs in Washington, D.C. In the 1970s and 1980s, Agins participated in the Festival of the American West and the Western Writer's Conferences held in Logan, Utah.